Mark “Coop” Cooper
Location: Harper’s Junction, Star Kingdom of Windsor
Coop might not have as much combat experience as the SGM or GYSGT. He didn’t even have as much as Eve, but he sure as shit wasn’t stupid enough to just walk into an unknown location, in the middle of enemy territory, without doing some recon.
When he made it within a few kilometers of Mike’s IOR signal, it became clear the other SRRT member had sought shelter in a small town at the foot of the mountains. Their planned LZ, and current rendezvous, was a similar town to the east, so Coop thought the local population might be sympathetic to the rebel cause.
He’d read the term ‘one horse town’ in a book, or he’d seen it in a holo before, but this town seemed to fit the bill. It was clustered along the only road in and out of the place, and was only a kilometer from outskirt to outskirt. The buildings and homes didn’t extend more than a block or two from the road and they went all the way up to the foot of the nearest mountain. With his Buss’ scope on high magnification, he could just make out the entrance to the mine in the distance.
He checked his IOR readings with what he was seeing with his own two eyes. Judging by that, Mike was holed up near the mine. Coop could make out a few natural terrain features that a V4 could hide in with camouflage, but if Mike had been hiding all day his battery was probably shit now. Among all the other crap the SRRT members were carrying was a portable recharger for their LACS. It would take a day to do the job the cradles on the ship could do in an hour, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Fighting the Windsor’s in his skivvies was not an option. He’d seen how well that worked out for the grunts on New Lancashire.
He watched and waited for a few hours. Night was falling, and the planet’s natural darkness would be the best way to conceal his approach. Finally, after hours of nothing aside from miners returning home – or to the bar – and no readings from his scans, he contacted Mike.
{I think I have eyes on your location.} He didn’t bother to announce his identity. There was only one person in the area who could be making contact.
{Coop? That You?} Mike replied. He sounded scared to Coop.
{I’m going to be coming in at your six o’clock. Keep an eye out for anything from your nine to three.} Coop’s plan was to set security, figure out their supply situation, and then start heading to their rendezvous. With Mike’s V4A load, he had twice as much shit to help in their negotiations with the natives.
{I’ll be waiting.} Mike cut the transmission.
Something tugged at Coop’s memory, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Despite everything coming back as all clear, he still felt uneasy. His gut was rumbling, and he felt like he was going to have the shits, which was a natural sign of his paranoia.
Coop wasn’t going to cart all his crap down to the town with him, so he started to strip the gear until he looked like his lean, mean, fighting machine self. He secured the rest with a cammo-net. Someone else would literally have to step on it to find the stash. Since he doubted anyone would be aimlessly roaming these hills at night, he thought the area was secure. Hefting his Buss to his shoulder, he moved out.
Trying to cover three hundred and sixty degrees by yourself was nearly impossible, but Coop had trained for times like these. He used the environment and his surroundings to cut down his profile as much as possible. That, matched with his active camouflage, made him nearly invisible. He crept through the outskirts of town. Despite all that humanity was technologically capable of, he couldn’t fool the family dogs along his path. They barked and jumped against fences as he passed, but he didn’t pay them much attention. It would be wise to eliminate the noise marking his progress, but he wasn’t a monster. He had no problem putting down an asshole human, but killing an innocent animal was the stuff of sociopaths.
As he passed the last fenced plot of land there were several hundred meters of open space between that and the next cover. The next cover was a small depression that Coop was fairly sure Mike was curled up in. It was only meter and a half deep, and was meant more as a drainage ditch for something farther up the hillside, but if Mike came down in this area as unexpectedly as Coop had at the farm, this was the best thing he could find in a pinch.
He took a final look around to make sure the coast was clear before sprinting to his target. It took him only a handful of seconds to slide into the depression like a baseball player sliding into home. He dropped the meter and a half into the ditch, but thanks to his bulk, it barely covered the top of his head.
{Mike I’m here. Ping me.}
{Coop? That you?}
{Of course it’s me. Who the fuck else would it…} the rumbling paranoia in Coop’s stomach suddenly dropped into his asshole. He had to pucker up to avoid the shits. {Ahhh shit.} He groaned just as the space around him was flooded with light.
Now he knew why he’d been feeling uneasy. The transmissions he’d been getting from Mike were identical, as if someone was playing them back to him. Coop would have slapped himself for being such an idiot, but he was too busy bringing his Buss into position to deal with whatever the threat was.
“This is Captain Wright of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, you are completely surrounded. Throw down your weapons and you will be treated with the same dignity and respect as your captured compatriot. Resist and die.”
He patched into a small drone he had flying overhead. It was about the size of a pencil, but the resolution it produced was awesome. The moment he connected and took in the data there was the buzz of automatic weapons fire and the feed went black. Since he was using his IOR to link with the drone, it confirmed to him that the Windsor’s had the ability to track IOR communication.
While losing the drone was a blow, it wasn’t unexpected. Battlefield drones tended to not last long in conventional combat, but it served its purpose. He now had a snapshot of the enemy forces arrayed around him.
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Captain Wright probably had an over-strength company at his disposal. Coop saw snipers and heavy weapons posted on a perimeter of rooftops. A mortar team looked like it had set up shop behind him on the high ground. He bet that was where the good captain was as well. The rest of the troops held a tight perimeter around Coop to keep him from escaping.
The only bit of good news was that he didn’t see any HI or those god-forsaken mechs anywhere. This was a straight infantry company, and he could work with that. He double-checked his battery, made sure his Buss was good to go, and toggled into his HUD’s main menu.
With the help of the new battlefield AI, he planned his next move. Even if he didn’t have a good picture of where some of the troops were, the AI deduced probabilities with him of positions and troop strengths. He knew he couldn’t take the projections as gospel, but they were better than blind guesswork. After a few minutes of calculations and inputs, he was ready to go.
“This is your final warning!” Captain Wright had been talking all along, but Coop hadn’t been listening. “Surrender now and you will be treated appropriately. If I have to come in there and dig you out then it will not be pretty.”
Coop couldn’t help but chuckle. The Captain was trying to threaten him in his overly proper accent. It didn’t come off as genuine malice, and besides, he was about to ruin the good Captain’s day.
With everything set. He braced himself and hit the execute button. A burst from his IOR sent out the instructions. As expected, the Captain rapid-fired orders to his troops when he detected the transmission, but by then it was already on. A few kilometers away, the cammo-netting was ripped to shreds as the mortar tube Coop had set up as his contingency rapid fired its entire thirty-round magazine. At the same time, Coop’s own 250mm tube spewed out EW and smoke rounds like its life depended on it.
Soon, the area was filled with shouts and confusion as the marines lost their electronic locks on Coop’s position. They also had trouble seeing with their own eyes, so they did the logical thing, and fired at his last known position. Only a few of the snipers and heavy weapons had a good angle on him from their elevated position, which was why they were hit by the incoming mortar rounds first.
While all of this was happening, Coop was hunched over and sprinting for his life down the drainage ditch. His AI had computed the best path to take to avoid most of the marine’s arsenal, and it hypothesized he had a thirty-three percent chance of making it out alive.
Coop saw their plasma-tipped rounds splatter explosively against his shield. It dropped precipitously when those big rounds hit, but he was still good to go. He was still running when the ground bucked beneath him and sent him sprawling forward. The marine’s mortars were finally getting in the game and they were peppering the area around where he had been hiding. He was a solid hundred meters away now, and out of the kill zone, but that didn’t stop the earth’s complaining from throwing him on his face. He didn’t let it slow him down. He couldn’t. It was move or die.
After executing complicated avoidance programs, Coop’s own 250mm shells started to rain down on the enemy mortar position. His AI informed him the Captain had deployed swatters, but it was clear he only had one in his tool kit. He was using it to protect himself and his most powerful weapon, but that left the rest of his men exposed.
Now, a hundred and fifty meters from his original position, Coop stopped, went prone, and fired off five quick missiles from his launcher. The rounds streaked straight down the ditch to his original position before arching up, away, and toward the unprotected troops. The Captain’s mortar’s retargeted on where the missiles had ached up, and by then Coop was already sprinting again and putting more distance between himself and where the enemy thought he was. The heavy weapons on the rooftop tried to save their own asses as the missiles dove toward them. Two were successful and two weren’t. More houses on the edge of the one-horse town collapsed as powerful explosives obliterated the structural supports.
Coop had no idea if the hits were killing the enemy troops, since they probably had some shielding, but he didn’t have to kill them to take them out of the fight. He just needed to rob them of the high ground. Regular rounds were starting to chew up the ground around the ditch, but he didn’t pay them any attention. The ones that made contact with his shield were a simple inconvenience. They wouldn’t even penetrate his armor.
At close to three hundred and twenty five meters from his original position, he popped out of the ditch and sprinted toward the town. The Captain was still blind firing his mortars into the smoky, EW-filled haze and didn’t have a lock on him. Coop knew this part was critical, so he poured on the speed.
He was halfway across the open ground when someone spotted him. The rounds that leapt out to meet him were regular and they harmlessly impacted his shield. He didn’t know another heavy weapon had acquired him until a three-round burst of heavy ordinary slammed into his side. His shield held…barely, and his HUD flashed a proximity alert of incoming indirect fire. Coop did what he was trained to do: he activated the ES feature to bond his armor tighter together, he made himself as small a target as possible, and he put all the power he could behind a final leap. He was only twenty meters from the nearest house, so he said a quick prayer to whatever war god that was listening to help him to safety.
His prayer was answered…kind of. He was being hit from three different directions at once. Small arms fire from in front, heavy rounds meant to degrade shields and pierce armor from the flank, and finally the mortars that tried to take him up the ass. The ‘kind of’ part was him being just at the edge of the kill zone when the mortar’s hit. The Captain’s fire mission was danger close, but Coop counted on him being a good officer and not wanting to drop fire on his own troops. He rode the blast, taking damage along the way as it blew out the front wall of the building. It didn’t collapse that structure, or he’d be totally fucked. Instead, he was only partially fucked.
“Owww,” he groaned as he rolled over and tried to get to his feet. His shield was reading zero and his battery had dropped to fifty percent. His side was numb, which meant something had gotten through the armor and damaged his nerves, or something had gotten through and the painkillers were dulling those nerves. He hoped for the latter. He struggled to his feet and felt an uncomfortable twinge in his lower back. Thankfully, a combat cocktail was dumped into his system by the AI because he was not alone. It registered a full squad of marines getting to their feet as well.
The drugged-up killer in Coop wanted to chase them and end this fight, but that was suicide. He needed to get out of here before the Captain didn’t have anything holding him back from dropping the house on top of him. He still turned back toward the gaping hole and fired off another wave of micro-missiles to cover his retreat. The AI was using old data at this point, but the spread would keep the marines busy.
While they dealt with that, Coop snuck out the opposite side of the building and hauled ass back to his stash with the camouflage activated. It didn’t serve much point in a fight because it was easy to trace back the origin of his fire, but even only partially operational after the damage it took during the battle, it helped him get to the stash
Unfortunately, another squad of royal marines had been dispatched to deal with the off-site mortars after they wreaked havoc on the perimeter. It was more unfortunate for them than Coop when he snuck up on them and started putting his blade through their guts. Unlike the last squad, this one had nowhere to run. A couple still managed to escape because Coop needed to grab his shit and bounce.
He couldn’t take everything. It would take ten minutes to layer everything like when leaving Argo, so he only took the necessities: extra ammo, the recharger, portable shield generator, basically anything that would prolong a fight against these assholes. He wasn’t even able to get everything before his HUD squawked about incoming ordinance. He still got his ass singed as he escaped, and the rest of the gear was thoroughly wrecked.
The combat drugs kept him going for another five clicks before he reached his threshold. He knew the crash was coming, and he needed to find to find cover and concealment quickly. The mountain was full of little nooks and crannies, and he found one that would work just as the fatigue caught up with him.
He passed out with thoughts of what to do next on his mind.
He passed out without answers.